Alkanes direct carbonylation

An interesting but rather unusual reaction involves the direct carbonylation of carbocations to carboxylic acid derivatives. Carbenium ions can be generated from alkenes or alkanes in strong acidic media. Thus, tertiary carboxylic acids can be produced from C4 or higher alkenes Koch-Haaf reaction) [39] (e.g., eq. (8)). Interestingly, Koch carbonylations are known to be catalyzed by copper or silver cations [40]. 

With ketones the e ending of an alkane is replaced by one in the longest con tinuous chain containing the carbonyl group The chain is numbered in the direction that provides the lower number for this group The carbonyl carbon of a cyclic ketone is C 1 and the number does not appear m the name... 

Section 17 1 The substitutive lUPAC names of aldehydes and ketones are developed by identifying the longest continuous chain that contains the carbonyl group and replacing the final e of the corresponding alkane by al for aldehydes and one for ketones The chain is numbered m the direction that gives the lowest locant to the carbon of the carbonyl group... 

Alkenes are reduced by addition of H2 in the presence of a catalyst such as platinum or palladium to yield alkanes, a process called catalytic hydrogenation. Alkenes are also oxidized by reaction with a peroxyacid to give epoxides, which can be converted into lTans-l,2-diols by acid-catalyzed epoxide hydrolysis. The corresponding cis-l,2-diols can be made directly from alkenes by hydroxylation with 0s04. Alkenes can also be cleaved to produce carbonyl compounds by reaction with ozone, followed by reduction with zinc metal. 

The more powerful the solvent-solute interaction, the more pronounced will solvent broadening be for this reason, saturated hydrocarbons are preferred as solvents for spectroscopy, and such strongly interacting media as methylene chloride and chloroform are to be avoided. It is obvious that the requirements of spectroscopy and those of solubility are in direct conflict. Carbon tetrachloride and carbon disulphide are often used as compromise solvents ) (although both of these react thermally or photochemically with many carbonyl complexes) but are generally inferior spectroscopically to alkanes. 

Although the direct interaction of metal complexes with alkanes under mild conditions has been demonstrated by the foregoing results, selective and catalytic functionalization of alkanes remains to be found. Success is probably more likely to be achieved by way of mild dehydrogenation (e.g., transfer of hydrogen to a suitable donor)6113 b or carbonylation rather than by oxidation. By analogy with Co(lII) oxidations of alkanes, these reactions should be facilitated by increasing the electrophilicity of the metal ion, e.g., by using the metal tri-... 

From the three direct [2 + l]-cycIoaddition routes, path a employing electronrich olefins and acceptor-substituted carbenes is the most efficient one, since the alkenes can be synthesized from carbonyl compounds or other precursors and the carbenes are produced from easily available diazo alkanes. Therefore this very flexible mode to construct donor-acceptor substituted cyclopropanes is by far the most frequently used route. 

Various other [3 + 2] cycloadditions, affording chiral, anellated C6o derivatives with stereogenic centers in the addends are reported in literature. The products were generally obtained as racemates and resulted from reaction of buckminsterfullerene with species like 2,3-disubstituted 2//-azirincs (via nitrile ylides [under direct irradiation] or via 2-azaallenyl radical cations [sensitization by photoinduced electron transfer]),365 1-substituted 5-diazopentane-1,4-diones (via cyclic carbonyl ylides),366 7-alkylidene-2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.1] hept-2-ene (via a diradicaloid trimethylenemethane derivative),367 1-benzylpy-razolidine-3-ones in the presence of aldehydes (via pyrazolidinium ylides),368 2-trifluoromethyl-2,5-dihydro-l,3-oxazol-5-ones (via nitrile ylides),369 nitro-alkanes in the presence of triethylamine and trimethylsilyl chloride (via N-silyloxynitrones),370 or dv-HOCH2 CH=C H C H 2 OCO 2 H( in the presence of... 

Rates of reaction of CO with (arene)Mo(CO)2 (alkane) and M(C0)5 (alkane), where M = Cr, Mo, W, have demonstrated that the reaction with Cr(CO)5 (alkane) involves an interchange mechanism while for Mo and W the mechanism is more associative. These resnlts are consistent with the known ability of the higher homologs to expand beyond a coordination number of 6. Flash photolysis and ultra high speed detection (0.4 ps, 4cm resolution) have allowed direct observation (Figure 6) of the vibrational cooling of CpCo(CO)(n-hexane), CpCo(CO)(n-hexene), and the group VI carbonyls. ... 

MTO has also been claimed to be the first transition metal complex to catalyze the direct, solvent-independent formation of ethers from alcohols [30]. Aromatic alcohols give better yields than aliphatic ones and reactions between different alcohols have been used to prepare asymmetric ethers. Also catalyzed by 1 is the dehydration of alcohols to form olefins at room temperature. When primary or secondary amines, respectively, are used as the limiting reagents, direct amination of alcohols gives the expected secondary or tertiary amines in yields of ca. 95 %. Disproportionation of alcohols to carbonyl compounds and alkanes is also observed for aromatic alcohols in the presence of MTO as catalyst. 

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